There is Another Sky is the fifth episode of the TV series Caprica. Directed by Battlestar Galactica regular Michael Nankin, the episode aired on 26 February 2010.
Plot[]
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Joseph Adama has been having trouble sleeping in the past couple weeks following the loss of Tamara-A. He is woken up late by his brother Sam, having missed dropping Willie off at school. Irritated that this is impacting his job as a criminal defense lawyer, he takes Willie off to school himself.
Still trapped in V-World, Tamara-A finds herself in a chatroom built to resemble a nightclub. Queue-jumping to look for Vesta displeases the mods, who take the role of bouncers. The mods let her through to see Vesta, though don't believe her story of being unable to exit. The male bouncer, Tad Thorean, arranges a meeting while Vesta plays an equivalent of Russian Roulette. After seeing a player de-rezz, Tamara-A insists on joining the game and is immediately shot in the abdomen so Vesta can get back to the game. Unlike all other players, however, Tamara-A cannot de-rezz, and instead lies on the floor bleeding out from a bullet wound. Though the other patrons are disturbed and baffled by what happened, Vesta sees promise in Tamara-A.
Act 1[]
Vesta talks with other users in the chat room about Tamara after hours. She suspects Tamara to be a "Sleeper", a creepypasta about users who go to sleep with their holobands on and end up comatose but online. Tamara is unconvinced, as if she were simply asleep someone would have woken her up by now, and even Vesta can only rationalise a broken Holoband as the reason she hasn't timed-out. Vesta suggests using hacks or a manual disconnect to get her out. Another user notes that Tamara's gunshot wound has healed, which is itself strange as injuries to any Avatar last until they de-rezz. In exchange for helping Tamara, Vesta wants her to play a video game to settle a score with another gamer.
At Joseph's home, he gets a phone call from Principal Andrews to check on Willie, who he hears has been sick since the middle of last week. Joseph realises his son must have cut school to be with Sam, and easily tracks him to the Tauron café, where he finds him working there in an apron. Sam accuses Joseph of not parenting him, citing an old Tauron saying to shame him.
Heracles, one of Vesta's friends, logs back into V-World and takes Tamara down a long passage to New Cap City, a popular interactive video game. There is no actual objective to the game so it cannot be completed, though some players theorise there to be a means of winning, such as by killing the most players or getting a certain amount of money/points. Their target is Chiron, who they are to track down and steal money from his in-game bank account. As this user invested heavily on in-game security features, a heist was never considered possible until now.
When the two arrive in New Cap City itself, she is overcome by how it is a highly realistic recreation of Caprica City, and feels like she is outside finally. Heracles keeps her pinned to a wall as a massive airship, the Dreadnought, flies past. Crewed by a team of players, the airship menaces the city, launching jet planes which lay waste to the streets and anyone in them. Hiding in an apartment building, Heracles explains that the game is such a perfect re-creation the developers make sure to update it constantly, saying that there is even a re-creation of the damaged area where the MAGLEV train blew up. Tamara has no idea a train blew up, which peaks Heracles' curiosity, as it happened some time ago, asking if she's been asleep all this time.
Act 2[]
The two head off to complete their mission, going to a nightclub Chiron frequents in the "lower east side" of the city. They find him at a table in the bar, sitting next to two women. Tamara asks why they don't just kill him, but he explains that they need him alive so they can get to his bank account. Tamara walks up to Chiron and pretends to be a lover of his. Chiron and his bodyguards are immediately suspicious. Tamara picks up a gun and kills one of the bodyguards, only to be shot herself. She fails to de-rezz, drawing attention from everyone in the club. As he stands in front of her, Heracles injects his back with a device and escapes with Tamara before he is noticed.
Still in pain, Heracles has carried Tamara to the apartment to recover. He watches as she looks through the mirror at her gunshot wound, which takes the form of a red glowing mass. Heracles finally reveals to her what their mission to the club was for. Using Vesta's hacks, he can use the device to steal login information from other users. To raid Chiron's bank vault, he will literally become a cyber duplicate of him to fool the game. Knowing she is still confused by the game, he changes the subject to a more personal one, that New Cap City means a lot to him as he feels he can actually matter there; Tamara suggests he get out more and try to be someone in the real world too.
While filing documents at home, Joseph happens upon a family photograph of a fishing trip in the Summer before the MAGLEV bombing. Hoping to restore his relationship with his son, Joseph takes Willie to the same spot to fish the following day. Willie does not understand why Joseph is doing this, and is easily bored. While fishing, a nearby group of teenagers are casually drinking and take notice the two are Taurons and, as Willie repeatedly looks back, they start teasing him, finally calling him a "little Tauron dirt-eater".
Daniel Graystone begins to realise his attempts to restore Graystone Industries' image are causing problems for the company itself. Cyrus Xander reluctantly explains that the board of investors has called an emergency meeting following his appearance on Sarno, where he promised to no longer make money on Holoband and associated technologies, despite being 60% of their income. Graystone realises this is effectively an ultimatum, that he must come up with an alternative income solution immediately, or be forced to resign from his own company. Xander won't say if the board has enough critics to do so, but his silence tells Graystone enough.
Back at the lake, Willie becomes more frustrated and starts more loudly demanding they leave. Joseph does his best to ignore the teenagers and focus on fishing. One of the boys gets up and jokes about his lack of success in catching fish, that with no luck they'd have to have dirt tonight. Getting a reaction out of Willie, he continues to make the remark. Finally, Willie picks up a large pebble and throws it at the boy, hitting him in the head and knocking him to the ground. Willie runs up and starts beating the boy.
In the night, Daniel cannot sleep, and when asked by Amanda reveals he might lose the company tomorrow. Amanda hopes to cheer him up by reminding him of how Graystone Industries got started in the first place, how when she was pregnant with Zoe they lived in Clovervale for months without having money to pay rent. Daniel planned for months a meeting with MicroCap to start up his company, but had to take the bus due to his car breaking down. His suit was wet through from the rain, and he broke his wrist after falling over. Despite all this he walked into the office and came out with a deal.
Act 3[]
The following day, the board meeting is underway. Complaints are made about Daniel going off-script and killing the Holoband business, though another investor raises how doing so has in fact sky-rocketed their approval ratings. Xander takes the latter view, that by dumping Daniel during this climb in approval will ruin their public perception. The meeting is halted by a thudding noise outside the office, and Daniel enters with the U-87. Having taken Amanda's advise, he presents them with an unexpected sales pitch. He asserts that the Holoband business is dead anyway; hacking and illegal downloads are too prevalent, and children using Holobands will only grow up to demand everything be free. Rather than spend the company's resources trying to preserve a "sinking ship", he insists they look elsewhere to another business. He presents the U-87 as the company's future. The board is not too interested with the U-87 at first, seeing it as a high-end robot costing millions of cubits and, therefore, too expensive for the consumer industry. Daniel orders U-87 to walk around the room and observe the board members. As it does so, he talks of its brilliant intellect as an "artificially sentient" being, earning some respect from Zoe. Daniel foresees a time where Cylons, for all their skills, will become the perfect labour force, not getting sick or being old and retiring, and don't have representation in employment and safety laws. Finally, he orders U-87 to pull one of its arms off. Zoe refuses to do so until Daniel becomes more aggressive in his tone, and finally relents. The U-87's arm is ripped off and thrown to the table. The board members are shocked by the sight of it, which Daniel explains as them anthropomorphising the U-87 due to its appearance. He sees this as a further selling point, as people will feel drawn to a humanoid machine.
Act 4[]
Back in New Cap City, Heracles and Tamara enter the bank, with Heracles in the form of Chiron. The bank is guarded by NPCs, who Heracles asks to leave the room. Tamara joins Heracles in the room, as he explains that a solution to Chiron's passcode was found by Vesta on a manhole cover. He has her stand in a square and step on the symbols of the Twelve Worlds in the order he gives them. When the sequence is completed, the floor opens up and gold coins float into the air. Heracles uses a device to scoop up the gold, earning hundreds of billions of points. Soon, his actions get the attention of the game, and the rest of the gold is pulled back into the account. Two NPCs enter the room, and Tamara forces Heracles down to save him, willingly taking the bullets in his place. The NPCs shut down.
Back at Joseph's apartment, he keeps an eye on Willie while he does his homework, but becomes angry when he starts playing with a pen to get at him. Talking with Sam and his husband Larry later, he is told that he is losing his son because he can't let go of Shannon and Tamara, and has to find closure. He and Sam arrange for friends and family to take part in the traditional ceremony for dead relatives.
At Graystone Industries, Xander enters the board room to tell Daniel he has earned the votes and will remain in control of the company.
Back in New Cap City, Heracles and Tamara head back to the bar on the lower east side. Chiron is out of the game, possibly dead, and Vesta now sits in his seat. Vesta asks for Chiron's money as part of the deal, but Tamara refuses to allow it until she is saved. Vesta has been doing some digging, and draws her attention to an old newspaper copied from the real world. Dated from a month ago, it describes a girl called Tamara Adams, aged 16, and living at apartment number 3 at 615 Olympic Street, Caprica City. Her name is on a list of people killed in the MAGLEV bombing, though she avoids telling Tamara and Heracles exactly what kind of list it is, with everyone else in the room "in" on it. She hopes to continue using Tamara for her own purposes. Angered, Tamara takes out a gun and kills every player in the room until only Heracles and Vesta are left. She demands he go to the real world address and tell her father where to find her. He is scared to do so, but she insists that doing this will make him somebody. He agrees and leaves. Finally, Tamara kills Vesta.
Act 5[]
At the Tauron ceremony, Joseph and Willie hand over coins to a priest so that Shannon and Tamara's souls can depart. The ceremony offers closure to Joseph so the two of them can say goodbye together. As a woman sings a traditional song, the priest gives Joseph a tattoo to mark the occasion in his life. With the ceremony over, it becomes a normal gathering again, and Joseph is happy. He gets a knock at the door, and answers it. Heracles tells him he was sent there by Tamara. Having seen her with a Holoband before, Joseph immediately believes him. Heracles asks him to simply wake her up, but is finally told the truth, that she is dead. When he demands Heracles take him to her, he gets scared and runs away, with Joseph crashing him down the street before getting tired and giving up.
Back in New Cap City, Tamara has now accepted she cannot escape, and has herself a new life and casually walks around with her gun out.
Production[]
Writing[]
The purpose of this episode was to be the 'true' introduction to the world of Caprica after the pilot. While the previous three episodes focused heavily on the human drama and introducing the cast, not much was going on to overwise show the wider world.
The idea of New Cap City emerged at a writer's retreat in Taho in January 2009, which stuck around partly because of its name being a pun on the film, New Jack City. The writers liked the idea of an advanced civilisation like Caprica having a more advanced version of an RPG. Having players commit casual violence also helped solidify the show's theme of societal decadence.
Much was done on the Tauron ceremony. This sequence helped explain the seriousness of Tauron tattoo culture, with priests applying them during religious sermons. Two songs were originally scripted, but it was decided only the second, song to the Caprica theme tune, was kept.
Due to a decision mid-to-late in Season 1.0's production that episodes do not have to include all main characters, scenes of Barnabas Greeley and Philomon using a dating site were moved to the next episode, Know Thy Enemy. Such editing in Season 1.0 was commonplace.
Directing[]
Michael Nankin was given a great deal of control over the episode due to his previous involvement with Battlestar Galactica, contributing to its use of effects. Nankin pushed for an older actress to play the role of Vestra, as he felt a teenage girl would not feel much of a threat in V-World or the real world.
To create a nonverbal character arc, director Michael Nankin had Genevieve Buechner change her fish-out-of-water performance of Tamara to make her seem more suited to New Cap City. Low-angle shots were used heavily in keeping with archetypal Noir films. The sequence where Heracles takes the form of Chiron in the apartment was done in a single take, with the two actors switching positions as the camera moves past, which the director also felt was in keeping with Noir.
The final scene, which involved Tamara walking down a deserted side-street in a dilapidated part of New Cap City, was filmed with a crane in what was dubbed the "Pale Rider shot", Nankin's attempt to mimic the Clint Eastwood western.
Design and effects[]
As Caprica was not initially proposed as a VFX-heavy program, the effects budget was initially quite marginal and handled in-house. The idea of changing that came with this episode, which wanted to set it apart from the previous three, even if it could cause funding problems later. During post-production, the idea came about that the establishing shots should look more 'alive' with glowing neon signs and aircraft flying around. Early ideas of Joseph Adama's Little Tauron apartment building, for instance, simply used an aged house in Vancouver. These shots were retroactively applied to the previous three episodes as well as the DVD version of the pilot.
As this episode was to take place heavily in virtual reality, more thought was made as to how the audience would know what they were seeing, particularly as there would not be V-Club and New Cap City. They already had in place a wipe to show the next scene would be in V-World, and an animation for when the scene cuts from someone putting on a Holoband and going to V-World, but due to the way the episode was edited it was decided having a shot each time would be a waste of time for the editor and take up part of the runtime. When it came to showing the difference between V-Club and New Cap City, the idea was given that the latter would have a Noir look to it with elements taken from 1940s films.
A scene at the start of Act 2 has Tamara in the apartment looking at her gunshot wound. During principal photography, Buechner had dots put on her chest for the injury to be CGI'd in, but this was changed in post-production to be her shoulder, perhaps to save money by having it not appear in the mirror all the time. As a consequence, however, these dots had to be digitally removed over thousands of frames.
Much of the episode involved green-screening, like Daniel's board room, and the New Cap City introduction had the two actors in front of a railing and everything else greenscreened until heading back inside. The bank itself was location filmed, using Vancouver's Marine Building.
Cast[]
| Actor | Character |
| Eric Stoltz | Daniel Graystone |
| Esai Morales | Joseph Adama |
| Paula Malcomson | Amanda Graystone |
| Alessandra Torresani | Zoe Graystone |
| Sasha Roiz | Sam Adama |
| Luciana Carro | Priyah Magnus |
| Karen Elizabeth Austin | Ruth |
| Camille Mitchell | Vesta |
| Sina Najafi | William Adama |
| Hiro Kanagawa | Cyrus Xander |
| Genevieve Buechner | Tamara Adama |
| Julius Chapple | Larry |
| Richard Harmon | Heracles |
| A.C. Peterson | Chiron (as AC Peterson) |
| Eve Harlow | Byun |
| Travis Turner | Ashok |
| Graham Chabot | Big Kid |
| Thomas Saunders | Jon Parker |
| Ian A. Wallace | Ferryman |
| Patti Allan | Tauron Rites Singer |
| James Ralph | Chiron's Bank Guard (as Jim Ralph) |
| Charles Andre | Rail Thin Man |
| Zoltan Crane | Man |
Further notes[]
- David Eike, Andy Sekler and Gary Hutsil took part in a DVD commentary for the episode.
- Deleted scenes
- Daniel is at home on the phone to the company HQ, unable to get to Cyrus Xander. His secretary, Vic, explains he is away and not picking up the phone.
- Sister Willow is in the drug bar. She feels an urge to phone Amanda Graystone, and ends up having a conversation with the answering machine. She reveals she knew about the Zoe avatar, and how it was going to change everything about life, death, faith and apotheosis. Sister Willow asks she find the avatar so she can be part of the One True God's plan.
- Daniel finds Amanda with power tools trying to repair the bed Zoe broke in an earlier episode. They ask about what to do with Zoe's room, whether to keep it as a shrine or use it for other purposes.
- Sister Willow wakes up at home realising what she did earlier. Nestor wakes up and, realising what she died, becomes angry at her for risking the whole family's life. He decides to sleep elsewhere.
- Joseph wakes up Willie early in the morning to go on the fishing trip.
- A crate is brought in by Agent Duram into the GDD building. It contains a special computer that turns photographs into 3D models, then used with security cameras to track people. He tests it out on a control group of fellow GDD members.
- Amanda goes downstairs to find Daniel playing with a Pyramid ball. He explains it's his favourite ball, handed to him by Buccaneers player Blasi Kovat when he was just a 10 year old in the standards. Amanda reveals she knew about the avatar through Daniel, but gets angry when he refuses to talks about it. He insists that was not her and trying to find her to say goodbye would mean nothing. Zoe is watching in the U-87 body, and puts her hands on Amanda's back.
Sources[]
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